Commands

Streambed provides operational commands for syncing, querying, backfilling, cleanup, and maintenance.

streambed sync

Main daemon. Streams WAL changes from Postgres, writes Iceberg tables to S3, and optionally serves queries.

./streambed sync \
  --source-url="postgres://user:pass@host:5432/db" \
  --s3-bucket="my-bucket" \
  --s3-prefix="iceberg" \
  --query-addr=:5433

This is the primary command you’ll use. It runs continuously, consuming WAL events and flushing them as Parquet files with Iceberg metadata.

streambed resync

One-shot backfill of a table via COPY under a consistent snapshot.

./streambed resync --table=public.users

Use this when you need to re-ingest a table from scratch — for example, after schema changes or data corrections.

streambed query

Standalone query server (no sync). Points at existing Iceberg tables on S3.

./streambed query \
  --s3-bucket="my-bucket" \
  --s3-prefix="iceberg" \
  --query-addr=:5433

Useful when you want to query Iceberg data without running a sync process.

streambed cleanup

Deletes S3 objects and local state for a table.

./streambed cleanup --table=public.users

Run this before resync to start fresh, or when decommissioning a table from Streambed.

streambed maintenance

Expires old Iceberg snapshots and can dry-run orphan planning.

./streambed maintenance \
  --table=public.users \
  --retain-last=1 \
  --dry-run

Use apply mode with --dry-run=false --force after reviewing the plan. Orphan deletion is currently dry-run only.

streambed maintenance compact

Compacts many small active Parquet data files into fewer target-sized files.

./streambed maintenance compact \
  --table=public.users \
  --target-file-size-mb=128 \
  --small-file-threshold-mb=32 \
  --max-input-files=1000 \
  --dry-run

Apply with --dry-run=false --force. Online compaction coordinates with streambed sync through the SQLite state DB, so the maintenance process must use the same --state-path, S3 bucket, and S3 prefix as the running sync daemon.

See Maintenance for details and safety notes.